Free Software Projects

The GNU Project has created lots of Free Software that now is the basis for important parts of every so-called "Linux distribution".
More importantly, its leader Richard M. Stallman has developed and frequently elaborates on the philosophy behind Free Software as it is known today.

Of course, I have to list Linux (the kernel) here, although I disliked the attitude and opinions of its creator, and very much disliked the increasing bugginess in recent versions at that time. For some years now (current: 2008), I'm rather satisfied with the state of the kernel; and since watching a presentation by Linus Torvalds about git, the Stupid Content Tracker, I also started to tentatively like Linux' creator. ;) I'm now an avid git user.

[
For those who want to know, I changed my opinion regarding Linus after realizing he is not just "downright rude", as someone put it, but often tries to be funny by this (?), and often is right with regard to the facts.
Or, where facts are hard to find or don't exist, favors an opinion that takes the project(s) in the right direction, and with "right direction" I mean usefulness for a technical user who is interested in what his system is doing, and wants it to do what it's doing as fast and, at the same time, reasonably safe as possible.
All in all, Linus has strong opinions, and even if I (still) don't agree with them all of (or even most of) the time, I think I can now tolerate his having these opinions, and admire the success this has brought to the Free Software movement, albeit under disregard of its founding moral principles...
But there is still a very vocal RMS, and the increased user base and even "industry importance" of much Free Software today at least gives him a wider forum to possibly be reached (one day).
]

GNU screen is "a full-screen window manager that multiplexes a physical terminal between several processes".
It let's you use one terminal (or terminal emulator) as if there were many of them, and most importantly let's you detach from a session and reattach later, from anywhere else
— ideal for use with ssh over dialup.

While I'm at it: The most popular Free ssh server and client implementation, OpenSSH, is developed by the OpenBSD Project.

mutt is a great terminal-based e-mail client; ideal for use with GNU screen.

And there is of course irssi, theIRC client for the terminal/console/text-mode; like mutt ideal for use with GNU screen.

Nowadays I've also started to do as much of my (information-related) web browsing as I can in ELinks, another great terminal-based, screen-oriented program.